Here are the points how great Hokusai is!
The famous Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne were also affected by him.
Katsushika Hokusai is an artist who is representative of Japan in the ukiyo-e genre, his active career is from the
18th century to the early 19th century, the later period of Edo era.
“Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” is his representative work. Many of his works affected paintings, music and all
kinds of arts not only in Japan but also internationally very much.
What is so outstanding? His diversity of exploring all kinds of arts, expressing well about his power and unique
way of expressing himself as well. It is said that his existing works are more than 30,000.
Hokusai is also famous for having lived longer although he died at the age of 88. His entire life as painter was
very stoic. He changed his own house name, what we call, his artist name now tens of times in his life. He
focused on painting so much and once his room became messy, he moved out tens of times. He did not care about
anything such as foods and clothing but painting. That was all about his entire life. It might be his passion for
painting is the only reason for being longer instead of not caring about clothing, foods and housing.
Once Japanism began to spread to Europe after 19th century, works which inspired by his “Thirty-six Views of Mount
Fuji” are coming up. There still exists artistic works of the famous Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne who were influenced
by Hokusai. Wild structural outline, Japanese ways of using colors gave vivid brightness to European painting
color patters which was mostly soft and mild.
Article; Yuuki Rei
